No Rest for the Wicked is not for everyone. Some points of contention may be:
- Respawning enemies for cleared areas on a timer (visible from the map).
- Heavy emphasis on resource gathering i.e. chopping down trees and mining minerals for upgrades or ingredients for crafted consumable healing.
- Area-based level scaling so it is easy to enter an area you are not leveled for.
- Randomized loot with different traits and rarities.
- Grinding daily and weekly objectives to stay on level pace with enemy levels.
- Limited upgradable inventory space so frequent visits back to town to free up slots are necessary.
These did not personally turn me away, but be aware that for its comparisons to a souls-like game, this is the situation. It has more of those traditional ARPG mechanics than you may expect.

Let's go through some positives first! The game is beautiful. It utilizes its painterly style very well in the character art and the environments, and good use of lighting considerably affects how the world feels and how encounters play out. Combat animations are smooth and there's appropriate weight behind actions. The voice acting is very good and the character animations are very expressive.

My greater issues and the reasons why I am not recommending this game in its current state are to do with the moment-to-moment combat and the systems surrounding it. Take a journey through my complaints with me:

- Enemies gain a period of stagger immunity after the first stagger, so any amount of aggression is unsafe. An enemy will get interrupted by your first hit and then ignore all subsequent hits for a duration, meaning you can only ever hit an enemy once or twice before having to play defensively. This especially makes crowd control an incredible pain.

- Most enemy attack timings must be memorized to be avoided. They will generally have a period of delay and then an instantaneous swing without a tell or indication that it's about to happen. This makes parrying that much more risky such that dodging with light equipment is almost always an easier and more rewarding playstyle. A slight input delay with controllers compared to keyboard and mouse means parries are very difficult to perform on reaction when using a controller, and certain enemies will not be staggered by a parry so there is no window for retaliation.

- Parrying does not cancel attack recovery, but dodging and walking does. Especially noticeable with slow weapons, you'll have to wait until your character moves after an attack before your parry inputs register, making it an all-the-more cumbersome defensive option.

- Some attacks cannot be parried. There is no indication as to which attacks cannot be parried.

- Heavy armour has too few advantages compared to light armour. It reduces the already-slow stamina regeneration speed at base, it causes a slower dodge, and it doesn't meaningfully reduce damage enough to be worth equipping when you can avoid damage entirely with lighter equipment. You gain access to a charging knockdown at the heaviest equipment threshold, but it consumes so much stamina that you can only get a couple of attacks to follow up with before having to back off again for stamina to regenerate.

- Leveling pace seems a little slow. I am entering most areas underleveled and I'm having to grind before exploring new places. Any newly-obtained equipment typically has such high stat requirements that I must either level up a couple more times and place attribute points exclusively into the relevant weapon stat to use it at all, or else respec and remove some combination of health, stamina, or equipment load to accommodate it. There is no partial scaling; a weapon listing a dexterity requirement will have no benefit from strength and vice-versa, so any build with both strength and dexterity leveled will only be able to use weapons that specify combination strength/dexterity scaling. Experimentation is therefore discouraged, and respecs are a limited resource.

- Weapon balance is skewed towards faster weaponry. Parrying with a slow weapon may not guarantee even a single safe attack because enemies may recover and attack quickly enough that you'll get punished for it.

- The game automatically locks onto nearby enemies, but at the edge of the lock range when transitioning between a locked and unlocked state, inputs such as dodges and parries are lost.

Still here? There's every chance that my complaints could be addressed in the game's full release, but I could not recommend it as it is. I enjoyed my time with it, but I am unlikely to go back to it until some improvements to the fundamentals of its gameplay are adjusted.

No Rest for the Wicked is not for everyone. Some points of contention may be: - Respawning enemies for cleared areas on a timer (visible from the map). - Heavy emphasis on resource gathering i.e. chopping down trees and mining minerals for upgrades or ingredients for crafted consumable healing. - Area-based level scaling so it is easy to enter an area you are not leveled for. - Randomized loot with different traits and rarities. - Grinding daily and weekly objectives to stay on level pace with enemy levels. - Limited upgradable inventory space so frequent visits back to town to free up slots are necessary. These did not personally turn me away, but be aware that for its comparisons to a souls-like game, this is the situation. It has more of those traditional ARPG mechanics than you may expect. Let's go through some positives first! The game is beautiful. It utilizes its painterly style very well in the character art and the environments, and good use of lighting considerably affects how the world feels and how encounters play out. Combat animations are smooth and there's appropriate weight behind actions. The voice acting is very good and the character animations are very expressive. My greater issues and the reasons why I am not recommending this game in its current state are to do with the moment-to-moment combat and the systems surrounding it. Take a journey through my complaints with me: - Enemies gain a period of stagger immunity after the first stagger, so any amount of aggression is unsafe. An enemy will get interrupted by your first hit and then ignore all subsequent hits for a duration, meaning you can only ever hit an enemy once or twice before having to play defensively. This especially makes crowd control an incredible pain. - Most enemy attack timings must be memorized to be avoided. They will generally have a period of delay and then an instantaneous swing without a tell or indication that it's about to happen. This makes parrying that much more risky such that dodging with light equipment is almost always an easier and more rewarding playstyle. A slight input delay with controllers compared to keyboard and mouse means parries are very difficult to perform on reaction when using a controller, and certain enemies will not be staggered by a parry so there is no window for retaliation. - Parrying does not cancel attack recovery, but dodging and [i]walking[/i] does. Especially noticeable with slow weapons, you'll have to wait until your character moves after an attack before your parry inputs register, making it an all-the-more cumbersome defensive option. - Some attacks cannot be parried. There is no indication as to which attacks cannot be parried. - Heavy armour has too few advantages compared to light armour. It reduces the already-slow stamina regeneration speed at base, it causes a slower dodge, and it doesn't meaningfully reduce damage enough to be worth equipping when you can avoid damage entirely with lighter equipment. You gain access to a charging knockdown at the heaviest equipment threshold, but it consumes so much stamina that you can only get a couple of attacks to follow up with before having to back off again for stamina to regenerate. - Leveling pace seems a little slow. I am entering most areas underleveled and I'm having to grind before exploring new places. Any newly-obtained equipment typically has such high stat requirements that I must either level up a couple more times and place attribute points exclusively into the relevant weapon stat to use it at all, or else respec and remove some combination of health, stamina, or equipment load to accommodate it. There is no partial scaling; a weapon listing a dexterity requirement will have no benefit from strength and vice-versa, so any build with both strength and dexterity leveled will only be able to use weapons that specify combination strength/dexterity scaling. Experimentation is therefore discouraged, and respecs are a limited resource. - Weapon balance is skewed towards faster weaponry. Parrying with a slow weapon may not guarantee even a single safe attack because enemies may recover and attack quickly enough that you'll get punished for it. - The game automatically locks onto nearby enemies, but at the edge of the lock range when transitioning between a locked and unlocked state, inputs such as dodges and parries are lost. Still here? There's every chance that my complaints could be addressed in the game's full release, but I could not recommend it as it is. I enjoyed my time with it, but I am unlikely to go back to it until some improvements to the fundamentals of its gameplay are adjusted.